Tournaments

Liebherr 2017 World Table Tennis Championships

Liebherr 2017 World Championships, social and viewership records broken

07 Feb 2018

The most followed table tennis event in history; the Liebherr2017 World Championships has smashed all social and viewership records.

Staged in Düsseldorf, Germany from Monday 29th May to Monday 5th June 2017, the tournament was followed by fans in 122 territories through television broadcasts and Over-the-top (OTT) platform streaming, reaching over a global 355.6 million audience.

A final to remember Ma Long (left) against (right) the flying Fan Zhendong (Photo: Rémy Gros)

by ITTF

In China alone, more than 319.1 million viewers tuned in to the event on CCTV5 and CCTV5+ to follow the results of their favourite stars.

Data provided by CSM Sports and Media Research has revealed that six matches, including the Men’s and Women’s Singles finals, gained places in this year’s Top 10 of sport, in terms of viewership figures.

“The Liebherr 2017 World Table Tennis Championships has jumped to another level in terms of table tennis coverage and viewership around the globe, with over 1,200 hours of coverage in all parts of the globe. Our research shows that the eight days event was watched by more than 300 million unique viewers on the five continents, a significant rise from all the previous World Championships, making it on par with the other big sporting players in the world.” Pierre Justo, Managing Director of CSM Sports and Media

Notably, with the introduction of new innovations such as aerial cam and ball tracking technology to bring new insights of the game to fans, the ITTF digital and social media platforms were able to achieve higher level of views.

“We considered it imperative that since taking the commercial rights back in house, we have to ensure our World Championships received the best TV numbers ever. Together with our partner Lagardère who put extra efforts to ensure a wide global audience; we are extremely satisfied with the result and are proud to say it’s arguably the most viewed Word Table Tennis Championships ever.” Steve Dainton, ITTF Acting Chief Executive Officer

Furthermore, itTV, the International Table Tennis Federation’s free online streaming platform, which offered eight tables of action live from Düsseldorf, attracted 810,000 fans who tuned in to the event from their mobile devices. The ITTF YouTube channel, which offered match highlights, interviews and other exclusive features, also hit 2.4 million views.

The 2017 World Championships was another breakthrough for the ITTF on social media with the help of increased social content creation. The “#TataDoorTricks” trickshot challenge, “Stiga Point of the Day” as well as the new “Liebherr Live” daily show that reviewed action of the day and previewed following day’s upcoming matches with athletes and coaches, were well received by fans to contribute to the record figures on the ITTF digital and social media platforms.

Impressively, the Liebherr 2017 World Championships related content reached 10.3 million table tennis enthusiasts on Facebook and leaving 34.7 million impressions on Facebook during the event.

In partnership with Weibo Sports in China, the event was a big success on the ITTF Weibo page, which now has over 1.33 million followers. Additionally, the tournament was one of the top trending hot topics on Weibo in China for the duration of the event, leaving a staggering 240 million impressions over the eight day period.